The music in the background is mid-period Duran Duran. Our rendezvous spots have included the atrium at Remi, room 101 at the Paramount, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

2. Haruki Murakami - Dance Dance Dance 1988

Talking Heads. Not bad, for a band name. Like some-thing out of Kerouac.
....
Instead she turned on the stereo. Talking Heads, Fear of Music. When did I ever put that tape in the deck?

3. Jennifer Egan - A Visit From The Good Squad 2010

Driving to pick up his son, Bennie alternated between the Sleepers and the Dead Kennedys, San Francisco bands he’d grown up with. He listened for muddiness, the sense of actual musicians playing actual instruments in an actual room. Nowadays that quality (if it existed at all) was usually an effect of analogue signaling rather than bona fide tape—everything was an effect in the bloodless constructions Bennie and his peers were churning out.

4. Francesca Lia Block - Violet and Claire 2000

I hit PLAY, and the PJ Harvey CD started up. Claire and I jolting with music as we drive through the air that was so sweet with jasmine and honeysuckle it could have been golden or silver.
With PJ still wailing and the air still glinting with fragrance, we drove to the Red Cherry, which was this transvestite bar in Hollywood that I’d always wanted to check out.

5. Davida Wills Hurwin - Freaks and Revelations 2009

“It’s Punk Rock, man,” Roy says the next day. “Where you been?” We’re at Glenn’s house. I’m playing them “Rocket to Russia,” which I just discovered.
“I know it’s Punk Rock, asshole,” I say. “It’s just, I didn’t get it until last night.”
“What’s to get?” Roy mumbles.
“Yeah, well, if you like them, you need to check out the Sex Pistols,” Glenn says. He always thinks he knows everything. He shoves in a new tape before I can say a word.“I am an anti-Christ, I am an anarchist,
Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it…”
“They’re twice as good live.” Glenn says, handing me the roach clip. He picks at one of his nasty zits. “I saw ’em in Frisco, at Winterland.”

6. Rainbow Rowell - Eleanor & Park 2013

Park pressed his headphones into his ears. Tomorrow he was going to bring Skinny Puppy or the Misfits. Or maybe he’d make a special bus tape with as much screaming and wailing on it as possible.

7. Jo Nesbo - The Leopard 2009

The Volvo Amazon glided onto the motorway as the street lights came on. In the front seats Holm and Solness were deep in conversation as Townes van Zandt sang in controlled sobs on the cassette player. On the back seat, Gunnar Hagen was stroking the smooth pig-leather briefcase he was holding on his lap.

8. Dana Spiotta - Stone Arabia 2012

At midnight Nik would put on the Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers.” The song is easy to recall because he played it every year at midnight. Which also makes the actual night difficult to recall, as all the moments hearing that song run into one another, indistinct, uniformly soundtracked. He poured some drinks. He keyed up the song. He poured himself a drink. He let the bar crowd start counting down the seconds until midnight. He poured more drinks.

9. Jonathan Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude 2003

The three bands lack a sole fan over eighteen. Every kid here would surely claim they’d seen Talking Heads on CB’s tiny stage and be lying, since they were twelve or thirteen last time that happened. You could grow up in the city where history was made and still miss it all. Talking Heads nowadays play the tennis stadium in Forest Hills: buy a seat at Ticketron in the basement of Abraham and Straus and take the subway to Queens like any other schmuck.

10. Nick Hornby - About A Boy 1998

He liked watching real stuff on EastEnders and The Bill, and he liked listening to Joe Strummer and Curtis Mayfield and Kurt Cobain singing about real stuff, but he'd never had real stuff sitting on his sofa before. No wonder, then, that once he'd made it a cup of tea and offered it a biscuit he didn't really know what to do with it.

11. Joey Goebel - The Anomalies 2003

She has short but really poofy white hair and wears bun-tight blue jeans, black tasseled cowboy boots, and a T-shirt that says “Sex Pistols” on it. I can’t think of what celebrity she looks like, probably because there aren’t any celebrities that are old ladies.

12. Iain Banks - Espedair Street 1987

They didn't stop at the end of Bowie's song; they launched straight into the Stones' 'Rock This Joint', then Led Zep's 'Communication Breakdown' ... played a little faster, if anything, than the original. I came to be cynical, and for the first thirty seconds of the Bowie song I was, just because I was a hopeless musical snob and Bowie was too 'commercial' for my taste; they were on more credible ground for me with the Stones and the Zeps ... but that feeling didn't last long. I ended up stunned. They were doing just by playing what I wanted to do by writing. There were rough edges, sure enough; they weren't all that tight, the drummer was more enthusiastic than his skills would let him get away with, the guy with the Hammond seemed to want to show it off rather than play with the rest of the band, and the chick's voice, though it was technically good, and powerful, sounded too polite. Classical training, I decided.

Minimum wage, bosses only a distant threat, no job security. One or two buzzes on the intercom per day, people who'd lost their tickets or didn't have change. There was a rack of CDs, bands whose names Rebus vaguely recognised: Kaiser Chiefs, Razorlight, Killers, Strokes, White Stripes …
'No CD player,' he commented.

15. George P. Pelecanos - King Suckerman 1997

Anyway, Cooper didn’t need that tinny-ass box hanging on the window. He knew the dialogue by heart. He’d seen Black Caesar, what, five, six times already. Even had the original sound track on cassette tape. James Brown, doin’ it to death. “Down and Out in New York City.” “The Boss.” And all that.

16. Gordon Korman - Born to rock 2006

But who could have believed the guy would turn out to be an icon? My mother was Sally Average, puzzle fanatic, book-group member, Oprah fan. For her, cutting-edge music was Pink Floyd. Her only addiction was to frozen yogurt. Even when she worked, she still managed to be a stay-at-home mom—like when she got her real estate license and couldn’t sell a single property.

17. Roddy Doyle - The Commitments 1987

–Better bleedin’ not.—An’ are YOU tryin’ to tell me that yeh played with James Brown?
–Among others, Brother.
–Like?
–Have we all night?—Screaming Jay Hawkins, Big Joe Turner, Martha Reeves, Sam Cooke, poor Sam, Sinatra.—Never again. The man is a thug.—Otis Redding, Lord rest his sweet soul, Joe Tex, The Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Little Stevie then. He was only eleven. A pup.—More?
–Yeah.
–Let’s see.—Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, Sam an’ Dave, Eddie Floyd, Booker T. and the MGs of course, Joe Tex.
–Yeh said him already.
–Twice. Em—an unusual one, Jimi Hendrix. Although, to be honest with you, I don’t think poor Jimi knew I was there.—Bobby Bland, Isaac Hayes, Al Green.
–You’ve been fuckin’ busy.
–You speak the truth, Brother Rabbitte. And there’s more. Blood, Sweat and Tears. The Tremeloes. I know, I know, I have repented.—Peter Tosh, George Jones, The Stranglers. Nice enough dudes under the leather. I turned up for The Stones on the wrong day. The day after. They were gone.

18. Michael Chabon - Telegraph Avenue 2012

A sweet-sounding copy of Melting Pot by Booker T. & The MG’s (Stax, 1971) was playing over the store system, and by the turntablism of chance, the record that Goode was lifting from the bin as Archy came in was a twelve-inch single of Roxanne Shanté’s “Live On Stage” (Breakout, 1989), built on the bedrock of sampled Booker T.

19. Ernest Cline - Ready Player One 2011

I memorized lyrics. Silly lyrics, by bands with names like Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and Pink Floyd. I kept at it. I burned the midnight oil.
Did you know that Midnight Oil was an Australian band, with a 1987 hit titled “Beds Are Burning”?
I was obsessed. I wouldn’t quit. My grades suffered. I didn’t care.

20. Salman Rushdie - The Ground Beneath Her Feet 1999

At a brilliant moment in British music, British radio is deadly dull. Restrictions on “needle time” mean that when you want the latest hit records—John Lennon singing “Satisfaction,” the Kinks’ “Pretty Woman,” or “My Generation,” by the new super-group High Numbers, who changed their name from The Who and immediately made the big time—all you get is Joe Loss or Victor Sylvester, music for dead people.

21. John Niven - Kill Your Friends 2008

I watch VH1 for a bit—Blur, Radiohead, Oasis and the Brand New Heavies—and am about to turn it off when there’s a little preview of the upcoming Brit Awards. We get Dodgy, the Chemical Brothers, the Prodigy, Longpigs, Mansun. I light another cigarette and watch as Ellie Crush is interviewed. “Yeah,” she says, “I know there’s people out there that fink a woman can’t do all the stuff I’m doing. That she’s a puppet? Yeah? But, y’know, I’m here, writing the lyrics and checking on the arrangements and doing all of that stuff. Yeah? My songs come from in here.” She flattens a hand sincerely across her heart.

22. Joe Meno - Hairstyles of the Damned 2004

The other problem I had was that I was falling in love with my best friend, Gretchen, who I thought the rest of the world considered fat. We were in her crappy car and singing, and at the end of the song “White Riot,” the one by the Clash, I realized by the way I was watching her mouth pucker and smile and her eyes blink and wink, we were way more than friends, at least to me. I looked over at Gretchen driving and she was starting to sing the next song, “Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?” by the Clash again, and I said, “I love driving around with you, Gretchen,” but because the radio was so loud all she could do was see my mouth move.

Caroline’s about to say something really harsh, but suddenly Hunter and Dev launch into a fucking Green Day cover, and we’re all seven years old again and dancing like we spit out the Ritalin while Mom wasn’t looking. We become this one flailing paramecium mass, fever-connected as the guitarist riffs electrons. Even Tris must be a part of this, and if we’re both a part of it, then that means we’re still in some way connected. Everyone in this room is connected, except Norah—she’s the kind of statue they don’t ever make, a statue of someone totally defeated. Caroline’s dancing against the guy from Are You Randy? like God or Billie Joe Armstrong meant her to do it.

24. Jeffrey Eugenides - The Marriage Plot 2011

Despite the loud music, not many people were dancing. Tony Perotti, in a Plasmatics T-shirt, was pogoing, all alone, in the middle of the floor.

25. Richard Powers - The Time of Our Singing 2003

I loved to watch Jonah when the best of the Village’s singers adventured onstage. He favored the sets of a southern woman named Simone who’d started out studying piano at Juilliard with Carl Friedburg. Her voice was harsh, but she took it into unknown places.

26. Ken Kesey - Sometimes a Great Notion 1964

And I put on what? Of course. John Coltrane. “Africa Brass.” I recall no malice aforethought in this choice, but who can say? Does one ever play Coltrane for the uninitiated without subconsciously hoping for the worst? Anyway, if such was my wish my subconscious must have been greatly pleased, for, after a few minutes of that tenor sax ripping away at the privates, Hank reacted according to schedule. “What kind of crap is that?” (Anger, frustration, great gritting of teeth; all the classic responses.) “What kind of godawful manure pile is that?”
“That? What are you asking? This is Jazz as black as it comes, black balls dragging the ground . . .”

27. Frank Portman - King Dork 2006

Our official legal relationship is pretty recent, though he’s been around for quite a while. I don’t know why they decided to get married all of a sudden. They went away for the weekend to see Neil Young in Big Sur and somehow came back married.

Afterward, we staggered to the parking lot in total silence. When we got to the car, Renée spoke up in a mournful voice: “I don’t think The Feelies are ever gonna be good enough again.”

30. Eleanor Henderson - Ten Thousand Saints 2011

On Johnny’s mismatched stereo, they’d play their stolen tapes—hard rock, heavy metal, hair metal, black metal, death metal, thrash metal, metalcore, hardcore, grindcore, punk—Black Sabbath and Whitesnake and Black Flag—and then methodically, with ears tilted to the speakers, they’d copy them. They dragged out the old orange extension cord and chugged away on Johnny’s practice amp, decorated with Metallica stickers and glow-in-the-dark stars. They were Demon Semen, Baptism of Jism, the Deadbeats, the Posers, and finally the Bastards, which most of them were, more or less.

31. Lionel Shriver - Checker and the Derailleurs 1988

Furthermore, Eaton was underage, and though he usually cooled his way past the bouncer by paying the cover with an unusually large bill, Eaton craved legitimation. He hated being nineteen. He remembered with humiliation the other night at Van Dam’s, when the thirtyish man beside him had asked him, as a drummer, what did he think of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”?
“Amusing, but finally bogus. I didn’t go along with the brouhaha over the album when it first came out.”
“Come on!” said the man. “It came out in ’68! You were listening to Iron Butterfly when you were one?”

32. Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box 2007

Except the weatherman was done talking, and it was the DJ instead: “…going to freeze our asses off, but Kurt Cobain is warm in hell. Dig it.”
A guitar whined, a shrill, wavering sound that went on and on without any discernible melody or purpose except perhaps to drive the listener to madness. The opening of Nirvana's “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die.” Was that what the weatherman had been talking about? He‟d said something about dying. Jude clicked the power button once more, returning the room to stillness.

33. Martin Millar - Lonely Werewolf Girl 2007

Kalix wished that she was someone else. She had an elaborate fantasy in which her true parents had abandoned her at birth, leaving her at the mercy of the MacRinnalch Clan. Either that or she had been stolen away as a baby and sold to the Thane. Her favourite fantasy involved her being the secret love child of one of the Runaways, preferably Joan Jett.

34. Sarah Dessen - Just Listen 2006

The player clicked a couple of times, and then I heard music, faintly. Owen reached forward for the volume button, then glanced at me. When I nodded, he turned it up. Hearing the opening chords, I had a pang of missing Kirsten, who, during her rebellion-filled senior year, had developed a passion for seventies-era guitar rock, which, at its height, had her listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon on repeat for what seemed like weeks at a time.

35. Harlan Ellison - Spider Kiss 1961

Phil Moore did things with Luther Sellers that Pygmalion would have admired. It was decided at a policy meeting that they would avoid the Jerry Lee Lewis image (spangled jackets, yellow ochre peg-cuff pants, fifteen pounds of marcelled hair, green lace shirts), while at the same time steering away from the Pat Boone brand of cleanliness.

36. Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn - The Gangster of Love 1996

Hendrix's spectacular, elegiac version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" sizzled over the airwaves of the Nakamichi sound system, our only luxury. Elvis fretted over the Nakamichi every time we left the apartment. He was sure some junkie was going to break in and take it (which some junkie eventually did).

37. Melissa C. Walker - Lovestruck Summer 2009

“What’s this band?” I ask, pointing to an Endless Rain album and looking up at his effortlessly cool face. At this point, the only thing I’m confident enough to ask him about is music.
“Dance tunes,” he says. “But dark.”
“Like Depeche Mode?” I ask, liking how he keeps his sentences short.
He looks at me then and grins, showing crooked teeth that give him that just-off-enoughto-look-perfect smile. “Kind of,” he says.

38. Steve Erickson - These Dreams of You 2012

We opened today’s show with Augustus Pablo’s ‘Chant to King Selassie,’ followed by ‘Tezeta’—which means ‘memory’—by the Duke Ellington of Ethiojazz, Mulatu Astatke, then Delroy Wilson’s ‘This Life Makes Me Wonder.’ Polly Jean Harvey’s ‘The Wind’ was in honor of the coming Santa Anas that strike terror in all our canyon hearts during fire season, and the song by Van Morrison about Ray Charles, who ‘was shot down but got up to do his best,’ was followed by the Genius himself with ‘Busted,’ in honor of our bank statement. We ended with ‘Always Crashing in the Same Car,’ back from the days when my daughter’s favorite rock star was hanging in Berlin.

39 Jennifer Echols - Dirty little secret 2013

On Tuesday I was in a band with Elvis. Lucky for me, he wasn’t the overweight Elvis from the 1970s, eating a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich and wearing a sequined jumpsuit, the version most impersonators go for. In that case, Ms. Lottie, the wardrobe lady, would have decked me out in a Las Vegas costume with a huge headpiece, a sheer body stocking, and sequined pasties over my nipples. Everybody in the band was supposed to match, more or less. So if the lead singer had been drugged-out Elvis on death’s door in Vegas, his fiddle player would have been a bare-breasted showgirl.

40. Jack Kerouac - On the Road 1957

Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety - leaning to it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world. Then had come Charlie Parker, a kid in his mother’s woodshed in Kansas City, blowing his taped-up alto among the logs, practicing on rainy days, coming out to watch the old swinging Basie and Benny Moten band that had Hot Lips Page and the rest - Charlie Parker leaving home and coming to Harlem, and meeting mad Thelonious Monk and madder Gillespie - Charlie Parker in his early days when he was nipped and walked around in a circle while playing. Somewhat younger than Lester Young, also from KC, that gloomy, saintly goof in whom the history of jazz was wrapped; for when he held his horn high and horizontal from his mouth he blew the greatest; and as his hair grew longer and he got lazier and stretched-out, his horn came down halfway; till it finally fell all the way and today as he wears his thick-soled shoes so that he can’t feel the sidewalks of life his horn is held weakly against his chest, and he blows cool and easy get out phrases. Here were the children of the American bop night.